Epilogophilia: Hate the Picture, Love the Frame
by L.M.Lewis
Summary: The one person Mark didn't call has something to say about it.


Disclaimer: The characters aren't mine and I make no profit from them

Author's note: Another piece from STAR for Brian 'zine number two. I hope you supporters aren't getting tired of hearing me thank you because I'm still very grateful.

**Epilogophilia—'Hate the Picture, Love the Frame'**

_It's only a few days until Christmas (exactly how few is a matter for some conjecture) but the Lone Ranger and Tonto are hard at work, stopping yet another shipment of illegal weapons, but coming no closer to the source. Hardcastle is cranky and determined. Mark tries to get him to take a break for the holiday._

_They pay a visit to the local tree lot and bicker cheerfully over the proper-size tree to grace the judge's den. Meanwhile, Martin Cherney, the mastermind of the gun-running operation, is tired of the interference. He sets in motion a plan to frame Hardcastle for murder._

_That evening, Mark decorates while Hardcastle stews. When McCormick goes off to pick up a 'few' holiday necessities, Hardcastle is also lured out by a mysterious phone call—it's Cherney's girlfriend, claiming to have information._

_Both men return to the estate. Hardcastle is empty-handed; no one met him at the appointed place. He tries to stall McCormick on the doorstep (he left the kid's present sitting 'under' the tree). Mark does an end-run around him, and the two are stunned to find the body of a young woman, who's been shot and left on the floor of the den._

_Cancelled checks, photos, and the ballistics of the murder weapon complete the frame. Hardcastle is arrested, and hauled off to jail. Mark tries unsuccessfully, on the eve of the holiday, to get bond. _

_Meanwhile, on the inside, Hardcastle runs an impromptu law clinic, and also continues to cause problems for Cherney. The mobster plans a prison murder. The judge fights off the attempt. Christmas Eve finds Mark at home, pondering, and Hardcastle still in a cell._

_The next day McCormick hocks the Coyote and comes to Hardcastle's rescue. The judge has made a connection between a middle-level member of the operation, and Cherney himself. A sting is set up, and Cherney falls for it. One last attempt to take out Hardcastle fails, and Cherney is recorded on tape, admitting that he set the judge up for the original murder._

**Epilogue**_ by L.M. Lewis  
_

Frank came upon him in the hallway, warming a bench and looking unfortunately at home in the waiting area of a police station. Mark glanced up at his approach and smiled.

"When d'ja get back, Frank?"

"Yesterday afternoon. I think if we'd hung around another night, me and the brother-in-law might've come to blows," the lieutenant said dryly. "Ten days is plenty with Claudia's family."

Mark nodded in distracted agreement, though Harper knew for a fact that the younger man had no recent experience with family gatherings. He glanced over his shoulder toward the door of Bill Giles' office.

"Milt's in conference?"

This got him another nod, still distracted, and then, a little sullen, "Yeah, him and Giles and the prosecutor. Dunno why I got parked out here."

Frank frowned. He'd heard much of the story from Giles himself, just that morning. They'd had a few fairly hard words over it, though Harper could understand Bill's point. The District Attorney had been calling the shots on this one, and no one wanted to have it look like a dead body was being swept under the rug just because an ex-judge was involved.

As to the 'why', Harper suspected Hardcastle's version of his brief but exciting career behind bars might be a little different depending on who the audience was, and for this recital—designed to hammer out the maximum number of charges against Martin Cherney—he wouldn't pull any punches. But, of all people, Mark ought to have been the one most likely to understand what was being discussed.

He tried out a smile on the man sitting in front of him and, getting no response to that, said, "You look like you could use a cup of coffee."

"Nah, I'd better hang around. He might—"

"It's not that big a station, Mark, and he knows where the coffee room is." He put one hand under the other man's arm and pried him up. "Come on."

He coaxed firmly. McCormick cast one last look over his shoulder at the closed door, as he let himself be towed along. Frank briefly considered his own office as an alternative—less noisy, more privacy—but he thought that might be too much of an official setting. So the coffee room it was, and he was surprised to find it virtually deserted, with a couple of officers on their way out.

Mark got no more than a glance from them; he was almost as much a fixture, by now, as the judge himself. Frank figured McCormick had probably consumed enough cop coffee in the past year to qualify for honorary membership in the LAPD. But somehow he thought it would take more than that. The kid still hadn't mastered the little, suspicious side-glances, whenever the judge's business took them anywhere near the holding cells.

Frank pointed at one of the tables and said, "Cream and sugar, right?"

Mark sat slowly, and nodded, scrubbing his face with one hand as though coffee had been standing in place of sleep lately.

"I wish you'd've called me," Frank said, as he carried the two cups back and set them down. "I mean, last week when all this was going on."

"Ah," McCormick hesitated; he might have been digging for the reason why, "I guess it all happened kinda fast, and I was running back and forth between the station, and the jail, and . . . I don't think there was anything you could've done." He sat back, with his face set, as though he was expecting to be criticized.

"Maybe not," Frank said with mild exasperation, "except be a friend."

Mark gave him a moment's blank look, and then said, "Yeah, but he was in jail. I mean, you couldn't have even _called_ him."

"No," the lieutenant shook his head, "I mean for you."

The blank look somehow got blanker, in the middle of a long moment's considering silence, which was finally interrupted. "Frank, _I_ was on the outside. I was okay."

"Not worried?"

Mark frowned. "Yeah, well, _that_." Another swipe at his face and he turned his head a little, looking past the lieutenant, back out into the main room beyond the glass wall. "Listen," he finally said, "I know he thinks he can handle himself, and most of the time he can, but prison is different—jail, too." The frown stuck and the man's eyes were tracking back in the direction of the hallway they'd just come down.

"Whaddaya suppose they're talking about in there?" McCormick finally asked quietly.

Frank sat back, wondering exactly what Milt had already told the younger man. _Not much, I'll bet_. Beyond his usual reserve, Frank figured the judge wasn't up to having any kind of detailed discussion about his recent experiences with a man who had Hardcastle's signature on his own sentence. He sighed slowly. _Might be kinda awkward_.

But Mark wanted to know, and it was possible that his imaginings—which weren't entirely imaginings, Frank was sure—were worse by far than the whole story.

"Probably working on additional charges against Cherney," Frank said with a casual shrug,

"From which part of it?" Mark asked quietly. "And what's with parking me outside?

Frank had figured it would go that way. Mark already knew the answer to the first part, and probably the second part as well.

"Well," Harper let out a long breath and took another one in, "Bill said they were going for solicitation to commit murder, if they can swing a plea with the inmate who took the cash from Cherney's people. And they've got the attempted murder beef to hold over that guy."

He watched Mark digest this, his pallor a little more apparent. He heard the nearly-silent muttering of 'attempted' and waited for the question that was bound to follow.

"_How_?" McCormick asked, quite simply.

"A shiv, that's what Bill said. Milt clocked the guy with a fire extinguisher, broke his jaw." Frank allowed himself a little smile. "See, Mark, he really can handle himself."

The younger man sat there, now more flushed than before. "I don't believe this," he finally sputtered. "You guys talk like—"

"It's over," Frank interrupted him with firm finality. "Because it _is_. He's out. You got him out."

"Almost too late," Mark exhaled, "it sounds like."

"Nah," Frank said, "in the nick of time, like always."

McCormick gave him a narrowed look. "A game," he shook his head, and his tone was bitter, "a damn stupid game. That's what you guys think it is. I swear, sometimes—"

"Was Cherney worth taking down?" Frank cut him off sharply. "Bill said he was running a couple million in illegal weapons through LA every year. That's a lot of murders. _Milt _must've thought it was worth it."

"And I know I don't get a vote," McCormick snapped back, just as sharp.

"Okay," Harper said, suddenly more conciliatory, "was it worth it?"

He watched the younger man's mouth open, and then close again, slower. He seemed to be giving it a lot more thought than a simple 'no' would have required.

Mark finally muttered a barely audible, "Not if it had gotten him killed."

Frank was less surprised by the idea, than by the fact that McCormick was willing to say it out loud. For a brief moment, he wondered what Milt's answer would have been, if the question had been put to him with the tables turned. _A better grasp of the greater good. Maybe._

"Okay," he stepped back through the argument, searching for a piece of common ground, "maybe next time you should call me. Maybe I think Giles botched it some. I would have at least gotten protective custody for Milt." He ignored McCormick's slightly disapproving face; he knew the younger man thought P.C. was one of the inner circles of hell.

He forged on, "I've even got enough equity for a decent second mortgage, Mark. We would have thought of something." He leaned forward, studying the younger man's face, trying to see if there was some understanding there.

"And, anyway," he added, "since when is it just _your_ responsibility, keeping him out of trouble?" He softened that with a smile of conspiracy and was relieved when he saw the hint of a returned smile.

"Yeah," Mark finally admitted ruefully, "probably needs at least two of us. Even that might not be enough sometimes."

"You're right about that," Frank said with a note of relief, glad to be finally in agreement about something.

And then they both looked up, startled by the turn of the knob, and the man in question leaning in through the doorway. "Wondered where you'd gotten to."

Mark's face was as nearly unconcerned as if he and Frank had merely been discussing the tight one Southern Cal had pulled off over Ohio State.

"Coffee," McCormick held up his nearly-full cup, as though that was all the explanation the judge was going to get and he'd better just deal with it.

Hardcastle frowned at the two of them. He'd clearly gotten the drift and must've figured it was at least partly his fault for leaving the kid to wander around unsupervised. "Well," he huffed, "we're done for now."

"_Finally_," Mark huffed right back at him. "So, what did the DA settle on?" he asked with an air of totally innocent curiosity.

"Ah . . ." It was a moment of equivocation; not an easy thing, Frank figured, for a guy who believed in the straight and narrow. "Still got a few details to work out."

"Yeah, but maybe you can give me the outline."

"Oh," Hardcastle frowned, "we'll talk about it."

"Uh-huh," Mark smiled. "We will."


End file.
